


The world keeps on spinning (even when we're down)

by Catherines_Collections



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Always asexual Katniss Everdeen, Character Study, Extended Metaphors, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Similies are a way of life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 01:34:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7020079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world starts out of darkness, blood, and murder; she imagines it will end the same way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The world keeps on spinning (even when we're down)

**Author's Note:**

> Because Suzanne Collins wrote a trilogy about war, the horrid sacrifices of it, and the cost of change.
> 
> I'm going by the books here and everything may not be 100% canon considering I haven't read the books in years (but when I did I loved them). All of this considered I hope you enjoy!
> 
> I own nothing but please enjoy.

The world starts out of darkness, blood, and murder; she imagines it will end the same way. 

. 

Her life begins through the cycle. Angels weep in heaven, staining her soul with their tears, as they weave her life. It is one of forced darkness, ever flowing blood, and tremendous murder that she must bear. (The Angels can only shake their heads in sorrow and wonder what their creator has planned.)

Her mother has her on a hot summer day, where screams and tears fill their small room and white walls amplify the oncoming red. (Her mother murmurs to her that daddy wishes with all his heart he could be there with her, but he’s stuck in the mines-will always be stuck in the mines -working for a way to feed his new baby girl.)

The second she is born, brought into the world screaming and fighting to be pushed back out of it, men die at their commander's hand; the same man who swears to protect all, crucifies in the name of peace. Men are slaughtered as she is born and together they all scream in a synthesized terrified chorus echoing half way across the country.

She is born covered in blood, and she imagines she will die the same way. 

. 

Be strong  they whisper, and so she is. 

.

They tell her the war will soon be over. Soon the resistance will have won and victory will be like honey on their tongues replacing the bitter taste of ash. 

The politician’s converse and the generals plan. Strategist find new routes to follow, new walls to climb, and technicians design death machines intended to crush the bones of the innocent and harmless. Their thirst for blood and hunger for bone gets stronger by the hour, and she begins to wonder if they are fighting the same war. 

. 

She is told to be a symbol-of flame and fire, of life and rebirth, of hope and happiness-and so she is. 

(She laughs on camera about petty jokes and children’s deaths, kisses her golden boy and holds his hands, cries when she is told to and makes sure her makeup runs. And through it all, her rage simmers and her resentment grows.)

.

The day she sells her soul is as hot as the one she was born to. Her mother doesn’t cry this time, but her sister does and she pretends that doesn’t make the situation any-easier, god they'd eat her alive -harder. This time instead of walls of white its soldiers and instead of blood its pedestrians; Fundamentally though, she laughs inside of her head, it’s the same situation.

Later she will look back on the memory, with bitterness sewn into her smile and four bottles already on the floor, and recall it as a form of rebirth. 

They call out her sister’s name, but they may as well have called hers. 

.

In the arena she learns the world is painted red. Beneath the green grass are stains of red from the decades before, from which the plant has grown. Flowers bloom in place of death and bushes continue to grow. The sky, she is told, was never truly blue in the first place, but a reflective surface in which light and colors are scattered upon. In that case, she does not understand why the sky isn't painted the color of blood. The sky reflects the events on earth and yet it does not contain its most common color. 

The world, she finds, is more than the yellows, blues, and greens most commonly seen. The world is underlying red and she doesn't know if she will ever come to accept her part in it. 

.

Her father dies in an accident-of all the things out to kill him; a collapsed coal mine beating out the lung disease and heavy assortment of possible poisonings that had attempted to claim his body many times before. He leaves them with a small dirty house they have come to call home, and a catatonic mother. 

So she rolls up the sleeves on her father’s old jacket-her new jacket-and crafts herself a new bow.

She brings in her catch the next day, two birds and a squirrel, and her sister helps her skin them. They cook and eat the meat and she will remember it- through the fancy suppers, and heavily wasteful dinners- as the best meal they ever had. 

.

She is told to fight and so she does. 

She is told to resist and so she does. 

She is told to hold her ground, and so she does.

.

 

She fights in the name of her father first. She fights by hunting for her family and keeping them alive, by befriending another hunter who grows to care for her family as well and ensures their safety in any instance. She fights by disobedience and bottled up rage, anger expressed through a broken fence and the hours spent crossing it. She fights the nature she encounters with steely determination and smiles out of spite when she's won. 

It isn’t long after that she fights in the name of her sister. The golden light in a red world, who sees the blood and smothers it in green and hope. She fights when her gold is threatened, and fights in her sister's place. She sets inevitable events in motion and reveals herself black in the spotlight; fooling them all into thinking she’s silver. 

The blues in the audience love her and the greens follow suit. Her gold sits at home miles away, but she is safe and so the fighting continues. She is taught to speak with a mysterious lilt to her words, and grins when her sponsor’s curiosity is peaked. 

.

She's always fought for peace, for the justice and care she and her family were many a time denied. She becomes a chess piece to the amusement of her enemies, and a martyr to the desperately hopeful. 

. 

 

In the end she fights for death. She fights in the name of others and strives to restore their freedom with her team. Helpless die at their hands, the revolution she had pledged her loyalty to murders in the name of peace. 

She learns the hard way, when the last sight of her golden sister is that of her caring for the innocent and wounded with a puzzled frown on her lips, that everything is the same. Nothing, she comes to know, changes. 

Her buried rage consumes her, locked away and having eaten everything else inside of her, and red becomes a dreadfully familiar sight. 

Her fight for death is no secret, her soldiers see it in her eyes and she stares at them until their gaze is turned downcast. They have no right to judge her; they have no right at all. 

.

She becomes the symbol of red - of blood and sacrifice, supposed loyalty, obligatory murder, of what the world will always be - the people love her for it, and she stops counting the days. 

.

She survives. 

Her life does not end on a dirt patch of battlefield with blood covering her like a cocoon-like an oil paint with her as the canvas. She does not die in the arena either time, and she survives numerous trips on and across the battle field. 

She laughs herself into hysterics with three empty bottles on the table and two on the velvet blue floor. 

She survives it all, every obstacle, every bullet, and every explosion. She survives, but for what she began fighting to protect perishes in orange and red leaving behind the vitriolic sting of betrayal. 

War, she knows, is not something many come back from; there are pieces of her scattered across every battle field, every arena, and every home in the country. Her face will be engraved in history on a red tapestry and stories will be told about those lost pieces and not the whole they came from. 

War, they teach her, is a survival game, bloody and gruesome, and nothing can prepare you for it; the goal of war is not to win, to get to the finish line first, but to live long enough to see other’s get there for you, for everyone. 

She does not die soaked in her own, or someone else's, blood. She lives, and so she continues to fight and kill, shoots and wishes- with hands stained by blood, the only part of her permanently red-that it would all just  end . 

She survives, but she does not win. 

.

She is told to stay silent- to allow bombs to be made targeting the innocent, for killing to be supported and endorsed in her name, for children to become soldiers underneath her nose - and that is what breaks her chains.

.

In the end she knows she cannot allow herself to drown in the red. To die smothered in the color as the day she was born. Too many are counting on her, and too many would follow suit. So she lifts her head above the tempting water and allows death to become a fanciful dream that haunts and beckons her every second. 

She has survived the battle, but the war has broken her. Life, to her, is a misery she must face head on in spite of the excruciating pain it is constantly sending through her and reminding her of.

She looks around at what is left of her team- her friends and supporters- of the people she has now sworn to protect, and knows the life she considers a curse would be for others a blessing, and is given another reason to tilt her head high.

So she bites her tongue, stares into the blue sky, lies on the green grass. She holds hands with her golden boy, kisses him in the golden sun, laughs in the shadow of their future, and opens bottle after bottle with her mentor. 

(Both she and her mentor, they’ve both seen the darkness-had it forced into them like a blade with no buffer and allowed the wound to fester and bleed- and so they drink to forget, but they always remember. 

The others have seen their share, been tortured and throttled, but it’s different for them. Her team-friends, family, allies alike- were not the queens, they were the pawns in the way of the kings. She drinks and drinks, and they both laugh at the comparison of being kings.)

.

Tears become scarce, too many shed for one lifetime, until they are no more. 

(Though she tells no one, she is glad; resentfully thankful to be rid of the salt that has plagued her far too many times to count.)

.

She watches as civilization is rebuilt, red upon red, decade after decade. More rules are constructed. Better written but underlying the same principles as before. She stares into the shadow of their future and the sunset of their past, and thinks about the cruel irony and the wars that will come to follow.

Her mentor shakes his head, picking up another drink. What is left of her friends and comrades, speak on possibilities of the future as if they did not fear for their lives yesterday. Her golden boy grabs her hand and squeezes, sparing her a smile full of a kindness she feels she deserves nothing of.

She watches their society reconstruct itself-futures form from dust, and presents redesign themselves, becoming accustom to new ways of life-and knows nothing ever really changes, red smothers gold and eventually bleeds into blue and green, but she just prays it never stays red.

.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated! If you have any prompts feel free to share some inspiration:)!


End file.
